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Authors: Dante

BOOK: Paradiso
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PARADISO XXVII

               
‘To the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,   

               
glory,’ cried all the souls of Paradise,

3
             
and I became drunk on the sweetness of their song.

               
It seemed to me I saw the universe   

               
smile, so that my drunkenness

6
             
came now through hearing and through sight.

               
O happiness! O joy beyond description!   

               
O life fulfilled in love and peace!

9
             
O riches held in store, exempt from craving!   

               
Before my eyes four torches were aflame.   

               
The one who, luminous, had come forth first

12
           
began to glow more brilliantly,

               
his aspect changing, as would Jupiter’s

               
if he and Mars were birds

15
           
and had exchanged their plumage.

               
The providence that there assigns   

               
both time and duty had imposed silence

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on every member of the holy choir,

               
when I heard: ‘If my color changes, do not be amazed,   

               
for while I am speaking you shall see

21
           
the color of each soul here change as well.

               
‘He who on earth usurps my place,   

               
my place, my place, which in the eyes

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of God’s own Son is vacant,

               
‘has made my tomb a sewer of blood and filth,   

               
so that the Evil One, who fell from here above,

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takes satisfaction there below.’

               
Then I saw that all this heaven was suffused   

               
with the very color painted on those clouds

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that face the sun at dawn or dusk.

               
As a chaste woman, certain of her virtue,   

               
merely on hearing of another’s fault,

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makes evident the shame she feels for it,   

               
just so did Beatrice change in her appearance,

               
and just such an eclipse, I think, there was above

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when the Omnipotent felt pain.

               
Then he added these words to his first   

               
with voice so altered from its former state

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that even his looks were not more changed:

               
‘The Bride of Christ was not nurtured with my blood—   

               
nor that of Linus and of Cletus—

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to serve the cause of gaining gold.

               
‘Rather, to gain this joyous way of life

               
Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban

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shed their blood after many tears.

               
‘It was never our intention that the one part   

               
of Christ’s fold should be seated on the right

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of our successors, and the other on the left,

               
‘nor that the keys entrusted to my keeping   

               
should become devices on the standards

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borne in battles waged against the baptized,

               
‘nor that I become the imprint in a seal   

               
on sale for fraudulence and bribes

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so that I blush, in turn, with rage and shame.

               
‘Ravenous wolves in shepherds’ clothing   

               
can be seen, from here above, in every pasture.

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O God our defender, why do you not act?

               
‘Cahorsines and Gascons prepare to drink our blood.   

               
O lofty promise,

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to what base end are you condemned to fall?

               
‘But Providence on high, which by the deeds of Scipio   

               
preserved in Rome the glory of the world,

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shall, as I can clearly see, soon bring assistance.

               
‘And you, my son, who, for your mortal burden,   

               
must return below, make sure they hear this

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from your mouth, not hiding what I do not hide.’

               
As when the sun touches the horn   

               
of the heavenly Goat and the air

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lets its frozen vapors fall in flakes,

               
so I saw the celestial sphere adorned   

               
with triumphant flakes of vapor soaring upward,   

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souls who had now been with us for some time.

               
My eyes were following their forms   

               
and followed them until the wider intervening space

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made me unable to pursue them higher.

               
My lady, therefore, who saw that I was freed   

               
from staring upward, said: ‘Cast your sight below

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and see how wide a circle you have traveled.’

               
Since the last time I looked down   

   

               
I saw I had traversed all of the arc

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from the midpoint of the first clime to its end,

               
so that on the one side I could see, beyond Gades,   

               
the mad track of Ulysses, on the other, nearly   

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to the shore where Europa made sweet burden of herself.

               
More space of this small patch of earth   

               
could I have seen, had not the sun, beneath my feet,   

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now moved a sign and more away.

               
My loving mind, which always lingers lovingly   

               
on my lady, ardently longed, still more than ever,

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to let my eyes once more be fixed on her.

               
And if nature or art have fashioned lures

               
of human flesh, or of paintings done of it,

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to catch the eyes and thus possess the mind,

               
all these combined would seem as nothing

               
compared to that divine beauty that shone on me

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when I turned back and saw her smiling face.

               
And the power that her look bestowed on me

               
drew me from the fair nest of Leda   

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and thrust me into heaven’s swiftest sphere.

               
Its most rapid and its most exalted parts   

   

               
are so alike I cannot tell

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which of them Beatrice chose to set me in.

               
But she, who knew my wish, began to speak,   

               
smiling with such gladness that her face

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seemed to express the very joy of God.

               
‘The nature of the universe, which holds   

               
the center still and moves all else around it,   

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starts here as from its boundary line.

               
‘This heaven has no other where   

               
but in the mind of God, in which is kindled

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the love that turns it and the power it pours down.

               
‘Light and love enclose it in a circle,

               
as it contains the others. Of that girding

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He that girds it is the sole Intelligence.

               
‘Its motion is not measured by another’s,   

               
but from it all the rest receive their measures,

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even as does ten from its half and from its fifth.

               
‘How time should have its roots in a single flowerpot

               
and its foliage in all the others

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may now become quite clear to you.

               
‘O greed, it is you who plunge all mortals   

               
so deep into your depths that not one has the power

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to lift his eyes above your waves!

               
‘The will of man bursts into blossom

               
but the never-ceasing rain reduces

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the ripening plums to blighted rot.   

               
‘Loyalty and innocence are found   

               
in little children only. Then, before

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their cheeks are bearded, both are fled.

               
‘One, still babbling, observes the fastdays,   

   

               
who later, once his tongue is free,

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devours any kind of food no matter what the month.

               
‘Another, babbling, loves and heeds his mother,

               
who later, once his speech has been developed,

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longs to see her buried in her grave.

               
‘Thus does the white skin turn to black   

               
in the first aspect of the lovely daughter

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of him who brings the day and leaves behind the night.

               
‘Lest you wonder at this, consider   

               
that, on earth, there is no one to govern

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and, in consequence, the human family strays.

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